Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health

"A deeply affecting work from one of the important and innovative voices in American health and medicine." -- Arianna Huffington

In Well, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health.

Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up.

The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine -- the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale.

Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character -- and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics.

• Public Health: What It Is and How It Works
• Healthier: Fifty Thoughts on the Foundations of Population Health
• Living with the Earth: Concepts in Environmental Health Science
• Epidemiology and the People's Health: Theory and Context
• Essentials of Biostatistics in Public Health (Essential Public Health)
• Population Health Science
• Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines
• Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine
• Health Care in Crisis: Hospitals, Nurses, and the Consequences of Policy Change
• Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care